“Go, first of all.”

“And after?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“No, do not go yet.  Sit beside me for a while and watch:  it is only Fortune that makes me your enemy.  I would willingly have lost to you.”

She looked so curious, sitting there with her yellow face, her wrinkles and her innumerable diamonds, that I could only sit and stare.

“I have seen many a desperate boy,” continued this extraordinary woman, “sitting beside me in that very chair.  Ah, many a young life have I murdered in this way.  I am old, you see, very old; older even than you could guess, but I triumph over youth none the less.  Sometimes I feel as if I fed on the young lives of others.”

She delivered these confidences without a change in her emotionless face, and still I stared fascinated.

“Ah, yes, they sit here for a moment, and then they go—­who knows where?  You will be going presently, and then I shall lose you for ever, without a thought of what happens to you.  Money is my blood:  you see its colour in my face.  Here they all come, and I suck their blood and fling them aside.  They win sometimes; but I can wait.  I wait and wait, and they come back here as surely as there is a destiny.  They come back, and I win in the end.  I always win in the end.”

She turned her attention to the game for a moment and then went on:—­

“It is a rare drink, this yellow blood:  and all the sweeter when it comes from youth.  I have had but a drop from you, but I like you nevertheless.  Oh, yes, I can pity, my heart is always full of pity as I sit here drinking gold.  Your friend is a charming boy, but I like you better:  and now you will go.  These partings are very cruel, are they not?”

There was not a trace of mockery in her voice, and her eyes were the same as ever.  I merely looked up in reply, but she divined my thoughts.

“No, I am not mocking you.  I should like you to win—­once:  I say it, and am perfectly honest about it.  You would be beaten in the end, but it would please me while it lasted.  Has your friend no money?”

“No, this was all we had between us.”

“So he came back and got you to play with your money.  That was strange friendship.”

“You are wrong,” I answered, “he was set against coming; but I persuaded him—­or rather, I insisted.  It is all my own fault.”

“Well,” she said, musingly, “I suppose you must, go; but it is a pity.  You are too handsome a boy to—­to do what you will probably do:  but the game does not regard good looks, or it would fare badly with me.  Good-bye.”

Still there was no shadow of pity in those unfathomable eyes.  I looked into them for a moment, but their shining jet revealed nothing below the surface—­nothing but inexorable calm.